Music on Mondays (1-12-15)—I’ll light a fire, you put some flowers in the vase

I had the pleasure of meeting Nevin Williams in person this morning after knowing him online for seven years!

Nevin is a mortgage broker, so in his honor, I thought we’d listen to two of my favorite songs about houses.

“This Ole House” by Stuart Hamblen, 1954

Stuart Hamblen (1908-1989) was one of American radio’s first “singing cowboys,” getting his start in 1926. According to Wikipedia: “This Ole House” was inspired while on a hunting trip in the High Sierras with a friend. The two men came upon what looked like an abandoned shack, wherein they found the body of an elderly man, apparently dead of natural causes. Hamblen came up with the lyrics to the song while riding horseback down the mountain, and composed the melody within a week.”

“Our House” by Crosby Stills Nash & Young, 1970

According to Wikipedia: “The song originates in a domestic event that took place while Graham Nash was living with Joni Mitchell (and her two cats) in her house [in Los Angeles] …. What happened is that Joni and I – I don’t know whether you know anything about Los Angeles, but on Ventura Boulevard in the Valley, there’s a very famous deli called Art’s Deli. And we’d been to breakfast there. We’re going to get into Joan’s car, and we pass an antique store. And we’re looking in the window, and she saw a very beautiful vase that she wanted to buy… I persuaded her to buy this vase. It wasn’t very expensive, and we took it home. It was a very grey, kind of sleety, drizzly L.A. morning. And we got to the house in Laurel Canyon, and I said – got through the front door and I said, you know what? I’ll light a fire. Why don’t you put some flowers in that vase that you just bought? Well, she was in the garden getting flowers. That meant she was not at her piano, but I was… And an hour later ‘Our House’ was born, out of an incredibly ordinary moment that many, many people have experienced.”